September 2017

09/21/2017

Language teachers in Finland say they are concerned about the falling number of foreign languages offered in Finnish schools. Teachers say that more than nine out of ten children are choosing English as their first foreign language over other languages.

According to Sanna Karppanen from the Federation of Foreign Language Teachers in Finland (SUKOL), the dominance of English, which over 90% of children study as their first foreign language, is driven by two reasons.

First, many municipalities are in financial distress and find themselves only being able to offer English instruction. Second, parents and children do not necessarily understand the importance of language skills.

"The general attitude among many Finns is that English is enough," says Jorma Kauppinen, director at the Finnish National Agency for Education.

"We need to change this," he adds.

"While it is true that you can get quite far with English, there is also need for other language skills, for example in working life," says Karppanen.

For Kauppinen it is a question of choice. "Twenty-thirty years ago, most schools in Finland offered a wide selection of languages for pupils to choose from."

"If there is no supply, there is also no demand," he says.

Bigger cities, bigger offering

There are also regional differences in language offerings. Schools in bigger cities, like those in the capital region, can offer multiple languages, but this is not the case in the rest of Finland, says Karppanen.

According to statistics from SUKOL, in 2012, Finnish was studied as the first foreign language by 5.3 percent of third-graders in 2012, followed by German (1.2%), Swedish (1%), French (0.9%) and Russian (0.3%).

Finnish students have to learn the other official language, besides their mother tongue, in school--meaning Finnish speakers learn Swedish and Finnish speakers learn Swedish, in addition to foreign languages.

The Finnish capital Helsinki is widely-known as the country’s most cosmopolitan hub, with residents and visitors alike generally able to do business in English, arguably the lingua franca of the world. But municipal leaders in Espoo are moving to claim the mantle of Finland’s most English language-friendly city by adopting English as the city’s third working lingo.

Last week Espoo municipal leaders got tongues wagging by announcing a plan to formally adopt English as one of the city’s official working languages. Espoo city board chair Markku Markkula stressed that the proposal would not see English given official language status the same way that Finnish or Swedish have, since use of the latter as official national languages are rooted in law.

"By law Finnish and Swedish are official languages as well as Sámi. English will not be a law-based official language, but we can make it real and concrete, not just by translating certain documents, but by making it a formal working language," he noted.

According to Statistics Finland, at the end of 2016, there were nearly 340,000 speakers of languages other than Finnish, Swedish and Sami resident in Finland. Espoo along with Helsinki and Vantaa are also home to the largest concentrations of residents speaking languages other than Finnish, Swedish and Sami as their mother tongue.

PTA: A sense of inclusiveness for English-speakers

Geraldine Bergius, the head of the parent-teachers association of the Espoo International School said that the city’s move represents an opportunity for the region’s English-speakers to feel a sense of inclusiveness.

She noted that the city is experiencing a growing bottleneck in its provision of English-language secondary school places in particular.

"You have a lot of kids who are educated in English or want to be educated in English and there’s not enough places for them. So if it's going to be adopted as an official language we see or hope that those places will open up and that there will be more availability to parents and students and families," she commented.

More importantly Bergius said, residents will have an equal opportunity to get information and access to services, the most important of which she lists as education and health care.

No need for schooling in Finnish or Swedish

The move is part of Espoo’s strategic plan for the future, and according to Markkula, while it will include initiatives like beefing up English-language communications such as policy documents and web content, it’ll also mean a deliberate shift to more services in English, such as health care and education.

"Within two years we could have education all the way from kindergarten to the doctorate level all in English. So that people don't need to go through education in complicated Finnish or Swedish," Markkula told Yle News.

He said that the decision means that municipal authorities will focus on increasing the number of kindergartens and schools teaching and working in English. Residents can already get daycare and primary school services in English and there are two options for students who want to study for the International Baccalaureate programme.

Markkula said that the city envisions partnerships with other institutions to provide more English-language training at universities of applied sciences and vocational institutions.

09/11/2017

Finland's repeated success in national education rankings means there are at least a few lessons the US can learn.

But one that it can't replicate — due to old-school mindsets about what education is supposed to look like — is how Finland designs its schools.

Finnish schools are increasingly adopting the mindset that flexible, open learning spaces are better than walled-off classrooms, and that mixing students of different ages is better than drawing bright lines between grades.

Here's what it's all about.

Kastelli school and community center, located in Oulu, Finland, was built in 2014 to serve 1,500 children. It's one of more than 100 schools built in the last few years to incorporate the open plan model.

As a joint school and community center, Kastelli also caters to adults looking to stay fit and healthy. But the building's primary purpose is to educate both kids and teenagers.

Architect firm Lahdelma & Mahlamäki designed the walkways and courtyards to fit the kids who would be using them most — smaller, kid-friendly areas for young children and wider blacktops for older ones.

Inside, however, such divisions collapse. The interior of the school is composed of long, sprawling hallways that keep students mingling with one another.

"There are a lot of soft chairs, big cushions, rocking chairs, sofas, as well as moveable walls and partitions behind which you can hide yourself for private discussions," he said.

This is a challenge for US schools, because it means giving teachers the freedom to teach how they want — not going by a set curriculum.

US schools also treat teaching differently as a career choice. In Finland, teachers are viewed as white-collar workers on par with doctors or lawyers. The majority of them hold advanced degrees, and they're highly paid.

In the US, teaching is closer to trade work. Teachers don't make much, yet principals, parents, and students put enormous pressure on them to perform.

The kind of freedom Finnish teachers enjoy comes from the underlying faith the culture puts in them from the start, and it's the exact kind of faith American teachers lack.

Not all Finnish schools are this up to date; I spent an exhilarating morning in a Helsinki school in a repurposed 1930s hospital. The atmosphere of tranquility stemmed from the teachers and students, not from the architecture.